Editor’s Letter: Awarding The PSLS Awards

December 17, 2013Written by Sebastian Moss

As the year comes to a close, it’s time for a quick Editor’s Letter letting you all know that it’s time for our annual awards. Yaay!

To shamelessly squeeze as much time out of the awards as possible, as well as ensure we don’t bury all of our news coverage with them, we’ll be spreading out the posts over the rest of the week, and then recapping it all with one big post at the end.

Along with the announcement, I thought it would be best to clue you in on the PSLS award decision process, and give you a behind the scenes look at how we choose the winner, leaving out the bits where we are bribed.

At first, the categories are chosen – too many and it gets silly, too few and you might fail to reward a game that deserves acclaim. Then, lists are drafted, and every half decent game that fits a category is noted down. Once this is all done, the PSLS staff vote and nominate winners for categories they feel knowledgeable in. Next up: discussions, arguments, torn hair, broken friendships, and, finally, a consensus.

With that, the PSLS awards are created.

Oh, and just to warn you: The Last of Us is going to win a lot. Yes, we’re a PlayStation-only site, and we’re giving most of our awards to a PlayStation-only game. Yes, some people will say ‘oh of course a PlayStation site gave TLOU a lot of awards’, but it doesn’t matter, The Last of Us is a hell of a game. The only question should be ‘Is it the Game of the Year?’, and you’ll have to wait until the end of the week to find that one out.

Or, I guess you could just check out another site’s awards, they’re generally all pretty similar.